


awake

by moonrocks



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Guns, Lovers To Enemies, M/M, Post-Finale, Threats of Violence, Unhealthy Relationships, but like sympathy for the devil i guess, lalo is evil i think you should know this by now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24068866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrocks/pseuds/moonrocks
Summary: Lalo confronts Nacho.Set immediately after the events of the season five finale.
Relationships: Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca/Ignacio "Nacho" Varga
Comments: 14
Kudos: 60





	awake

**Author's Note:**

> Required listening: Lana Del Rey's entire Honeymoon album.
> 
> This will probably be a bit OOC, but it's my first time attempting the very difficult task of figuring out how Nacho and Lalo would even function around each other after the season five finale, so give me a bit of a break on this one.
> 
> Enjoy!

When Lalo was six years old, he used to sleepwalk. 

He would wake up in odd places in the middle of the night: the kitchen pantry, the walkway that led away from the Salamanca property, the cellar steps. Sometimes he would be holding odd things: his Mickey Mouse nightlight unplugged from the wall and warm against his palm, a bent spoon from the kitchen drawer, his socks which he had somehow taken off and balled up in both fists. 

The house—which was usually rowdy with extended family, staff, and his father’s business associates—was suddenly quiet. It creaked and settled around its occupants while they slept, breathing as they breathed although no one was around to hear it. Time meant less in those hours between midnight and morning. No one needed him. No one was looking for him. It allowed him to really think. 

It took Lalo less than a year to grow out of it, but he always remembered how it felt to wake up and not know who, where, or when he was. Aimlessly swimming in a hazy soup until his consciousness refocused and leaked into reality. As he stood in the dark and gradually became lucid, he realized it would be much easier not to sleep at all. Wakefulness meant security, his mind still sharp while his parents remained oblivious in their beds. His presence outside their doors was unknown to them, his musings all the more secret as he paced up and down the halls.

It was so quiet, quiet enough that Lalo, who matched the silence in every way, could pretend he was the only one alive.

Not much has changed.

It is half-past three when Lalo limps his way through the death and gun smoke that has engulfed his home. Yolanda blocks his path, a rounded red spot growing like a blood moon on the front of her dressing gown. 

Lalo keeps walking. 

He is the only one awake. He is the only one alive.

Lalo is careful not to make too much noise as he climbs through the second-story window.

The safehouse was easy enough to find, the coordinates inputted into the GPS of a vehicle Lalo had found abandoned near the gate. He knows he should probably recuperate while Fring believes him to be dead, but that lie was never going to hold water for very long. He has the upper hand for now; he must use it to his advantage. 

Lalo moves through the hallways like a ghost, twinning the shadows that warp every corner. His footfall is much quieter than it logically should be, but he’s had years of practice. He can hear armed men somewhere beneath him, playing cards and drinking, probably celebrating whatever substantial sum Fring has paid them. There is music and laughter. Lalo flexes his hand around his pistol, the safety already unfastened.

There is a room at the end of the hallway. The door is closed but unlocked, unlike the others which hang ajar. Lalo slips inside. The lights are off, but he can see the outline of Nacho in bed. His body language is tensed and his eyes are open, fixed on the wall in front of him. He knows Lalo is here.

“Are you awake?” Lalo asks and raises his gun in line with his dirt-stained hip. 

“Yes,” Nacho answers.

“ _Bien_.” 

Gun still pointed, Lalo pulls the chair from the corner of the room. It scrapes against the floor, the sound quiet but excruciating. Lalo sits down while Nacho sits up in bed. He slowly raises his hands to his sides, palms turned outwards so Lalo can see his heartlines: a habit from having a weapon pointed at him before. Lalo is unworried. He doubts the men downstairs would let Nacho keep his gun, not that Nacho would do something so careless in circumstances like these. 

Lalo lets Nacho stay where he is, half-dressed with his legs tangled in the sheets. His eyes are wide and sleepless, the whites prominent beneath his furrowed brow. His sweat reflects what little light seeps underneath the door from the hallway.

Lalo chuckles as he sits down. “Seeing ghosts are we, Ignacio?”

Nacho exhales and his breath comes out in a stutter. “How did you survive? How did you find me?”

“The men Fring hired were sloppy,” Lalo says with a shrug, uninterested in delving into the details.

His reaction was so instinctual he barely remembers the attack in sequential order, only glass shattering as a bullet entered the kitchen and tore through Ciro. The rest is an obscuration of dust and gunfire. When Lalo blinks, he can see the image of blood pooling around Miguel and Cecilio imprinted on his eyelids. He thought a man as careful and cunning as Fring would have vetted his hired hands, but many professional hitmen are situated underneath the thumb of the cartel. Fring sacrificed skill for discretion and it had cost him.

“Honestly, I expected more from Fring,” Lalo muses. He gestures towards Nacho with the tip of his gun just to see him squirm. “But that shit with the pan, the foil around the lock . . .” He laughs and wiggles the gun again. “Now that was clever! Did you come up with that yourself?”

Nacho nods slowly, his jaw clenched.

“Hey, I knew you were smart. And I know you know how this works,” Lalo says quietly, his face hardening. “You make a noise, you move, you do anything to alert those men downstairs and I put a bullet in your head. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes.”

Lalo watches Nacho’s chest rise rapidly with his breathing. The man Lalo would have put all his trust in, the man Lalo would have made an honorary Salamanca just hours before, is now nothing more than a cornered animal. Nacho stares down the barrel of the gun and Lalo thinks back to the night Nacho risked arrest to retrieve their product from the stash house. It was a game—it had _always_ been a game—but Lalo thought he was the one moving the chess pieces on his side. In the end, his mistake was not underestimating Fring but underestimating Nacho.

“ _Oh Dios_ , poor Nachito. I guess whatever Fring offered you is no good now.” Lalo tut-tuts. “What was it, huh? Did he promise you money? Power? Status? Your own piece of the business once the Salamancas were out of the picture?” 

“No,” Nacho says.

“Then what?” Lalo grinds his teeth together, quickly losing his patience.

Nacho hesitates even as Lalo inches the pistol closer, the butt grazing the armrest of the chair. His eyes never deviate from the barrel except to look at Lalo himself. Lalo can see Nacho evaluating the situation, planning out his answer very carefully.

“Fring is threatening my father,” Nacho says plainly despite the tremor in his voice. “I have to do what Fring says or else my father is a dead man.”

Lalo frowns, confused, expecting a different answer. He always thought of Nacho as ambitious, competitive, with the potential to become an important player north of the border. That was why Lalo assumed a promotion from Don Eladio would ensure Nacho continued to further Salamanca interests while Tuco served his sentence and Lalo operated down south. Lalo had been to his house, seen his frivolous possessions, his drugs, his women. Lalo had touched him, felt Nacho come undone in hands, witnessed him give in to pleasure and pain and nothing less. Nothing indicated he was driven by anything but greed. Nacho had never spoken about his father. In fact, he avoided any mention of family even when all Lalo discussed was his own.

Lalo scoffs, willing away his unease and his uncertainty about whether Nacho is lying or telling the truth.

“Did you just come up with that?” Lalo asks. He chuckles, then points at Nacho accusatorily with his unoccupied hand. He waggles his finger. “Men will say a lot of things when they’re begging for mercy, but that’s one thing I’ve never heard before.”

“I’m not begging, I’m telling you the truth,” Nacho says. “Why would I lie?”

“Why would I believe you?” Lalo spits. “Tell me, why should I believe anything that comes out of your mouth?” 

“What do I have to gain by lying? You have a gun to my head. If you want me dead, I’m as good as dead,” Nacho says. “But please, believe me, I only wanted to keep my father safe. Once I did what was asked, once you were taken care of, Fring promised to let me and my father go.”

“Let you go?” Lalo raises his eyebrows. The laugh that rips through his chest is ripe with condescension. He never knew Nacho was so naïve, so short-sighted. “Fring will never let you go. He will kill you and your father before he ever lets an asset slip between his fingers. Do you think a man like Fring wants a loose thread like you dangling over his entire operation? You think you can just disappear, out of reach where Fring has no eyes on you?” 

Lalo shakes his head, leaning forward in his chair with his elbows resting against his knees. He can smell the blood drying on his shoulder. It blends in with the dirt that stains his clothes in grimy patches from head to toe. Anger distends between the spaces in his ribcage as his index finger inches closer to the trigger of his gun.

“My people are dead because of what you did, Ignacio,” Lalo says. He stands, the floor creaking beneath the soles of his boots as he lumbers over to the bed. Nacho is stock-still as Lalo hovers above him, gun poised but half-heartedly gripped in his hand. “You have obeyed Fring for nothing. You have blood on your hands regardless of whether your father lives or dies.”

Rage threatens to consume Lalo, wholly and irreversibly, as he leans over and presses the barrel of the gun beneath Nacho’s chin. Nacho winces, his head jolting backwards ever so slightly. The metal is undoubtedly cool to the touch. It has been several hours since Lalo last fired it, having lodged a bullet in the skull of the man he forced to call in the hit. Lalo presses harder and listens to Nacho’s breath hitch in response. He revels in Nacho’s fear, so tentative and anticipatory and _awake_. He wants Nacho to suffer, but he needs to keep him alive.

Fring.

It all comes back to Fring. Nacho is an asset Lalo could use against the Chilean, but that means nothing if he lets his impulses overtake his reasoning. Lalo recognizes this and tempers himself, pulling his finger back from the trigger. He knows the value of control. 

And he knows the value of guilt.

“Yolanda, Ciro, Cecilio, Miguel,” Lalo reiterates. “The people who welcomed you into my home, cooked for you, protected you. Dead, all of them.”

Nacho falters just as Lalo expects. His hands, which have been raised for several minutes now, finally fall to his sides. His head hangs lower, chin coming to rest against the barrel of the gun, almost daring Lalo to kill him. He looks down and his eyelashes, which are pilling with moisture, obscure his eyes. “I told them no innocents had to die.” 

“No,” Lalo says and he lowers the gun instead of surrendering to temptation. “But Fring must. You need to tell me what he and his men have been planning.” 

“And if I refuse?” 

“If you refuse, I deal with Fring myself,” Lalo says. “And then I come for you.” 

“And my father?” Nacho asks, maybe resigned to his own violent fate but not to the possible fate of his family. “Will you come for him too?” 

Lalo thinks about Yolanda. He should take an eye for an eye, but Señior Varga is the only bargaining chip he has. If Nacho believes the outcome will be the same no matter what decision he makes, there will be no reason for him to disobey Gustavo Fring. 

“My business is with you, not your father,” Lalo says, running his thumb back and forth over his pistol grip. The leather is smooth and warm: an untimely reminder. Lalo recalls how Nacho used to surrender beneath his hands, so compliant and malleable. But if Lalo touched him now, he thinks the feel of him would blister his fingers, leaving them cracked and oozing. “Do as I ask and your father will be safe, side with Fring and I can’t protect him. But the choice is yours, Ignacio. Either way, Fring must burn.” 

With that, Lalo straightens. He tucks his gun into his jeans as he walks to the window, then quietly unlatches it. Nacho says nothing, but Lalo can feel his eyes boring into his back: assessing, deliberating, deciding. Lalo slides the window open and a mild near-sunrise breeze seeps inside.

“Get some sleep, Ignacio,” Lalo says. 

“Not sure if I can anymore.”

Lalo looks over his shoulder at Nacho, his skin dyed blue by the gradually brightening sky. All Lalo sees is a man, a man he no longer knows or recognizes. “Best to stay awake then.”

Lalo leaves.

Under cover of darkness, he is asleep. Dead for one day more.

**Author's Note:**

> It's funny because Nacho is still lying to him and Lalo thinks all the cards are on the table now. Oh, Lalo. You poor thing.
> 
> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Please let me know what you think! I'm especially curious with this one.


End file.
